New Blueprints for China's Skyline

It's not about pagoda-shaped skyscrapers, says Beijing architect Yung Ho Chang. It's about buildings that affect people's daily lives

12/23/2005 By Reena Jana

In the frenzy of China's current building boom, it's easy to forget that 12 years ago, no private architectural firms even existed in the country. In 1993, Yung Ho Chang opened the first: Atelier FCJZ. The initials stand for Feichang Jianzhu, or "unusual architecture." Today, he splits his time between his office in Beijing and MIT, where he was named head of the architecture department in 2005.

His bi-continental professional life is reflected in much of his work, which blends traditional Chinese forms like the courtyard house (a home with an outdoor living space bordered on all sides by walls) and boxy, streamlined structures that recall the modernist designs of American architects like Philip Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright.

FOREIGN DESIGNERS Chang has steadily contributed to the development of the new 21st-century Chinese landscape, with buildings like the sprawling residential project Villa Shizilin located outside of Beijing and the corporate headquarters for Chinese software company Ufida, also in Beijing.

Recently, Chang spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Reena Jana about fresh directions in contemporary Chinese architecture, the wave of buildings -- now under construction -- by famous Western architects in China, and how the training of both American and Chinese architects can improve. Edited excerpts from their conversation follow:

Do you believe a new style is emerging that defines contemporary Chinese architecture?
Contemporary Chinese architecture should reflect the economy we have today, which is global. This "global" characteristic is part of the new lifestyle we have, now that we are participating in an open market.

Yet, on the other hand, to talk about "Chinese architecture" is to talk about something local and original. I'm not sure "balance" is the right word to describe the delicate combination between the global and the local that we're shooting for in my practice.

We find traditional Chinese architecture interesting. For a while, people around the world generally associated "Chinese" with the traditional and "Western" with the modern. We started to see that it really doesn't have to be a divide or opposition between them. So for the past two to three years, we have been working on reinterpreting the essence of Chinese architectural forms.

Some supertall skyscrapers feature adapted traditional forms. What do you make of these large-scale attempts at iconic Chinese commercial architecture?
Taipei 101 -- which is in Taipei -- and Shanghai's Jin Mao Tower are both trying to interpret the traditional pagoda structure as giant office buildings. But that's not the only way to arrive at a "Chinese" form of contemporary architecture, and these buildings don't relate to their cities that much.

What I'm saying is, you can't build a city with lots of Taipei 101s or Jin Maos. They're meant to be one-of-a kind structures. It's very difficult for them to accomplish anything other than provide an iconic image.

The engineering aspects of these buildings are interesting and challenging. But I think the very important issue of how these buildings deal with the space around them is sometimes overlooked. That said, they are important examples of contemporary Chinese architecture -- although the majority of typical Chinese office buildings don't look like them.

A lot of daring buildings by international "star" architects -- like Rem Koolhaas and Herzog and de Meuron -- are also popping up in Beijing and Shanghai. What political and practical effect will they have on China's urban landscape?
Buildings like the CCTV tower in Beijing, designed by Rem Koolhaas, or the Guangzhou Opera House, by Zaha Hadid, will have bigger impact outside of China than within. These new buildings by Western architects are about sending a signal. What they say is "China is open to architectural innovation." They're very positive in that way.

But cities are made of all kinds of buildings. I'm not sure there is a civic significance to these new buildings, beyond their role as iconic images. They don't have much effect on people's daily lives.

You've taught architecture at Peking University and now at MIT. Do you use the same approach to training architects in the U.S. that you did in China?
There's something fundamental in my thinking: Architecture is a social practice. American architectural education is heavily theory-oriented. It's a kind of philosophical and metaphysical practice. In the States, I'd like to see a theory built on the physicality and materiality of making buildings. It's an urgent issue in the U.S., and architects need to fight back and to make architecture relevant in society.

Most Americans don't use the services of architects directly and don't benefit from their theoretical knowledge. When I was a student and teacher in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, architects were reading and talking about French philosophers like Jacques Derrida -- ideas that won't help architects reach out to middle-class people who will live and work in the buildings they design.

Do Chinese architectural students and architects have similar dilemmas?
In China, we don't have the same problem. It's the reverse. Generally, we make new buildings with very little thinking on the part of architects, because the common perception is that buildings are just eventually constructed by the construction team. As a result, there really is not much substance behind many modern Chinese buildings.

At Peking University, where I used to teach, I made sure that students did hands-on projects. At MIT, I ask students to do lots of making, building, and fabrication, too, although everyone is interested in the more advanced technologies of computer renderings.

But the ideas needed to design a great building are the same as they were for centuries. American and Chinese architects need to learn how to make buildings. And there are social concerns, too. We need to make real buildings for real cities.